Poetry

How it might have gone

How it might have gone

Jody's Notes

Maybe this poem needs some explanation. Newton's relationship with Flamsteed was a bit rocky. That's true. Appropriate citations to Flamsteed appear in the first and second editions of the Principia but Newton sheds them spitefully for the third. Newton is interested in alchemy and astrology and numerology and Bible studies too. (He's interested in a lot of things.) The rest of the poem isn't even sheer speculation; it's just made up. (You can do that in poems. Fiction too.)

(I think some people have lost touch with how important it is to make things up. To recognize how far making things up can go. They shouldn't spend their days just reading popular biographies and digests of current events. They need to recognize that the imagination is always at work even in the stuff they think is just being reported.)

The poem was reprinted in the second edition of The Lust for Blueprints, 2001.